Tuesday, December 27, 2011

The Original & Second Gas
Chambers at Belzec and Sobibor

On March 17, 1942, the
first deportation trains carrying Jews from Lublin arrived at the Belzec camp.
As the capacity of the ramp was limited inside the Belzec camp, the trains were
often separated into two or three sections, all driven into the camps
individually. Only a select few locomotive drivers were allowed to bring the
trains into the Belzec camp, while the others had to stop just outside the
entrance. Polish railway worker Stefan Kirsz testified to these events after
the war:

As a co-driver of a locomotive, I led the
Jewish transports from the station of Rava-Russkaya to Belzec many times…These
transports were divided in Belzec into three parts. Each part, which consisted
of twenty freight trains, was taken to the railway spur inside the camp pushed
by the locomotive, and stopped near the former border wall of 1939/1940.
Immediately after the freight cars stopped inside the camp, they were emptied
of Jews and their luggage. I saw that in addition to the living, corpses were
taken out…The Germans did not allow us to watch the camp, but I was able to see
it when I approached the camp and deceptively pretended that I must put the
coal closer to the entrance gate.[41]

Those Jews who survived
the transport to Belzec were unloaded into the reception area (Camp I) and
separated by gender. During this time, assurances were being made by SS staff
(usually camp commander Wirth) that the arrivals would be bathed, clothed, and
then sent on to other camps in the East. All prisoners were then made to
undress. Former T4 associate SS- Unterscharführer Karl Alfred Schluch, who had
been deployed to Belzec when the killing operations began, attests:

In the morning or noon time we were informed
by Wirth, Schwartz, or by Oberhauser that a transport with Jews should arrive
soon…The disembarkation from the freight cars was carried out by a group of
Jewish prisoners under the command of their capos. Two or three Germans from
the camp staff supervised this action. It was my obligation to carry out such
supervisions. After the disembarkation, the Jews were taken to the assembly
square. During the disembarkation, the Jews were told that they had come here
for transfer and they should go to baths and disinfection. This announcement
was made by Wirth and translated by a Jewish capo.[42]

SS-man Kurt Franz[43] also
testified about the unloading procedure at Belzec:

I heard with my own ears how Wirth, in a
quite convincing voice, explained to the Jews that they would be deported
further and before that, for hygienic reasons, they must bathe themselves and
their clothes would have to be disinfected. Inside the undressing barrack was a
counter for the deposit of valuables. It was made clear to the Jews that after
the bath their valuables would be returned to them. I can still hear, until
today, how the Jews applauded Wirth after his speech. This behaviour of the
Jews convinces me that the Jews believed Wirth…[44]

As the women were given
haircuts, the men were sent to the gas chambers first in order to decrease the
chance of rebellion. Following the haircuts, and once the gas chambers had been
cleaned from the previous batch of victims, the women with children were sent
on. In order to reach the gas chambers, victims were sent along a “tube” (Schlauch),
a forested and fenced pathway leading from the reception area to the
extermination area. A recent analysis of wartime aerial photographs of the Belzec
camp revealed indications of fencing matching the description of this “tube”
(see image 5.1). These lineations are likely the result of fallen needles and
other foliage which was interwoven into the fence to help camouflage the march
to the gas chambers.[45]

Image 5.1: Traces
of the “Tube” at Belzec, with an image showing the possible location of the Gas
Chambers

Witness SS officer Schluch
described the extermination procedure as follows:

After the Jews entered the gas chambers, the
doors were closed by Hackenholt himself or by the Ukrainian subordinate to him.
Then Hackenholt switched on the engine which supplied the gas. After five or
seven minutes - and this is only an estimate - someone looked through the small
window into the gas chamber to verify whether all inside were dead. Only then
were the outside doors opened and the gas chambers ventilated… After the gas
chambers were ventilated, the Jewish Work Kommando under the leadership of a
Kapo and removed the corpses out of the chamber. Occasionally, I had to
supervise at this place; therefore, I can describe the whole process, which I
saw and witnessed personally…The Jews inside the gas chambers were
densely packed. This is the reason that the corpses were not lying on the floor
but were mixed up in disorder in all directions, some of them kneeling, according
to the amount of space they had. The corpses were besmirched with mud and urine
or with spit. On the corpses I could partially see that lips and also nose tips
had a bluish discoloration. Some of them had their eyes closed, others’ eyes
rolled. The bodies were dragged out of the gas chambers and inspected by a
dentist, who removed finger rings and gold teeth…After this procedure, the
corpses were thrown into a big pit.[46]

The most serious criticism raised against Schluch’s testimony by MGK has
been for allegedly plagiarizing the Gerstein report.[47] This
charge is simply unconvincing for the many distinctions in Schluch and
Gerstein’s testimonies. Whereas Schluch describes bodies in disorder inside the
gas chambers, in various directions, and with some kneeling on other bodies,
Gerstein is clear that the bodies were so packed that they had no space “to
fall down or even lean forward.”[48] Schluch
and Gerstein diverge on the degree to which gassed corpses were blue; Gerstein
refers to the whole corpses as blue, while Schluch only refers to a bluish
tinge on the victims’ lips and nose. While Schluch was very uncertain on the
type of engine used for the gassings, Gerstein showed no hesitancy to state
that it was a diesel later on in his accounts. For the size of the gas
chambers, Schluch describes the size of the original/old gas chambers (4 x 8 m)
while Gerstein refers to that of the new ones (6 chambers, 5 x 5 each) On the
size of burial pits, Schluch’s very rough estimate (30 x 20 x 5/6 m) is not
close to that reported by Gerstein (100 x 20 x 12). Schluch and Gerstein also
discuss details ignored by the other; Schluch discusses the victims’ eyes,
while Gerstein discusses menstrual blood. It is clear that Schluch was not
drawing his testimonial evidence from the Gerstein report, despite the best
wishes of MGK to disregard Schluch’s testimony.

Several weeks behind in its construction, Sobibor was planned similar in
its general layout to Belzec. Victims would be brought in through rail,
unloaded on a ramp, brought to the reception camp (Camp II), separated by
gender, undressed, shaven, gassed, and then buried. SS-Obersturmführer Franz
Stangl, chosen by Globocnik as the first Commandant of Sobibor, was given a
taste of his future task in a required visit to Belzec, where he was to meet Belzec
Commandant Wirth. Stangl later discussed the visit:

I can’t describe to you what it was like… I
went there by car. As one arrived, one
first reached Belzec railway sta­tion, on the left side of the road. The camp was on the same side, but up a
hill. The Kommandantur was 200 metres
away, on the other side of the road. It
was a one-storey building. The smell…Oh
God, the smell. It was everywhere. Wirth wasn’t in his office. I remember, they took me to him... he was
standing on a hill, next to the pits ... the pits ... full... they were
full. I can’t tell you; not hundreds,
thousands, thousands of corpses ... oh God.
That’s where Wirth told me - he said that was what Sobibor was for.[49]

At Sobibor, the gas chambers were finished in mid-April, a month after
the start of operations at Belzec. Three chambers, measuring approximately 4 x
4 meters according to some accounts, were housed in a wooden structure atop a
concrete base. Erich Bauer (who MGK incorrectly identify once as ‘Ernst’ Bauer)[50],
self-proclaimed Gasmeister (gas master), described the newly constructed
Sobibor gas chambers:

When we arrived, Lager 3 had not been
completely fenced off yet, certainly not on the right hand-side, and I am not
sure whether any fence had been put up through the woods. The gas chamber was
already there, a wooden building on a concrete base, about the same size as
this courtroom though much lower, as low as a normal house. There were two or
three chambers, in front of which there was a corridor that, from the outside,
you accessed via a bridge. The doors were indeed wooden; they were changed
later, when the gas chamber was completely rebuilt. The airtight doors arrived
only later; I collected them myself from Warsaw, but that was not until the new
building went up.[51]

The descriptions of the
first gas chamber building and the first gassing experiment at Sobibor have
been heavily criticized by MGK in their writings, particularly by Kues.[52] MGK
highlight variations among the testimonies of Bauer, Fuchs, and Stangl
regarding these items to cast doubt on the veracity of the gassing claims
(though no coherent arguments are made, simply well poisoning on sources).

Regarding the building, in contrast to Bauer, Sobibor Commandant Stangl
declared to Gitta Sereny that the first gas chamber “was a new brick building.”[53] While
this testimony was provided nearly three decades after the event (with the
profound impact such a time can have on one’s memory), it must also be
remembered that Stangl was later transferred to Treblinka in early September,
around the time that new brick gas chambers were being constructed at his new
camp, which could be the source for the confusion.[54] The
statement by Fuchs[55] regarding
the building itself is ambiguous, as Kues recognizes[56], and
hard to pinpoint which building Fuchs’ is referring to as the gas chamber
building, and what he meant by “concrete structure.” Even so, Fuchs is in
agreement with Bauer in that the supporting structure of the gas chamber was
made (at least partially) of cement, for the gassing engine had been installed
on a “concrete base.”

Kues similarly highlights the variations in memory between Fuchs and
Stangl regarding the first gassing at Sobibor. According to Fuchs, following
the installation of the engine a trial gassing was performed:

If my memory serves me right, I think 30 to
40 women were gassed. The Jewish women had to undress in a clearing in the
woods near the gas chamber and were herded into the gas chamber by the
aforementioned SS men (Floss, Bauer, Stangl, Friedl, Schwarz and Barbl) and
Ukrainian Hilfswilligen. Once the women were inside, I operated the engine with
Bauer. At first the engine was in neutral. We both stood by the engine and switched
the dial to Freiauspuff auf Zelle (open exhaust to chamber), so releasing the
gas into the chamber. As directed by the chemist, I adjusted the engine to a
set RPM, making any further accelerating unnecessary. After about ten minutes
the 30 to 40 women were dead. The chemist and the SS Führer gave the signal to
shut down the engine. I packed my tools and saw how the bodies were taken away.
They were transported by means of a Lorenbahn (narrow gauge railway) leading
from the gas chamber to an area farther away.[57]

Stangl, on the other hand,
details a different version:

Wirth was screaming and shouting again. He
was around the back of the building, where the exit doors were. He was ranting
and raving about the doors being too small. The people who were to be gassed
had been pushed into the gas chambers through the exit doors. If they had gone
in on the entrance side, they might have been spotted by someone outside the
camp. (…) I think the bodies were buried near the brick building. No grave had
been dug. I am certain that the bodies were not naked, but were buried with
their clothes still on. I heard at the time that the people had resisted being
locked inside the gas chamber. That was another reason why Wirth was so
furious.[58]

In a later interview with Gitta Sereny (which Kues quotes), Stangl later
states that the first Sobibor gassing was performed on 25 work Jews, implying
males.[59]
However, Kues ignores Stangl’s admission that his information on the gassing
was hearsay. This is why Stangl constantly refers to his conversation with
Michel regarding the gassing (“Michel told me later”, “Michel said”, “I heard
at the time”). Only in regards to the burial of bodies does Stangl purport his
own beliefs, suggesting his arrival near the gas chambers didn’t come until
after the gassing, if he came at all (and didn’t simply learn of the event from
Michel).

These variations, easily explainable as errors of memory (the testimonies
were recorded many years after event), incorrectly reported events (Stangl
admits hearsay from Michel), or as a result of two separate gassings (Fuchs
does not list presence of Stangl, Wirth, or Michel at gassing), hardly
substantiate MGK’s thesis that a conspiracy was determining or providing
answers for the Nazi perpetrators during their trials in order to fabricate the
Holocaust.

Following the successful test gassing(s), Sobibor was ready to handle
transports of Jews starting in late April/early May. The opening of the Sobibor
camp coincided with the liquidation of whole Kreise (counties) in the district
of Lublin. Activity at Sobibor was substantially increased as a result of the
sudden closure of Belzec in mid-April due to Wirth and other German officials
leaving their post at the camp.[60] SS-Oberscharführer
Kurt Bolender, who was stationed at Sobibor, described the extermination
process:

Before the Jews undressed, Oberscharführer
Hermann Michel (deputy commander of the camp) made a speech to them. On these
occasions, he used to wear a white coat to give the impression (that he was) a
physician. Michel announced to the Jews that they would be sent to work. But
before this they would have to take baths and undergo disinfection so as to
prevent the spread of diseases…After undressing, the Jews were taken through
the so-called Schlauch. They were led to the gas chambers, not by the Germans
but by the Ukrainians…After the Jews entered the gas chambers, the Ukrainians
closed the doors…The motor which supplied the gas was switched on by a
Ukrainian called Emil and by a German driver called Erich Bauer from Berlin.
After the gassing, the doors were opened, and the corpses were removed by a group
of Jewish workers.[61]

Erich Bauer also testified
after the war about the Sobibor gassings:

When a transport came that I worked with, I
was with Fuchs and with Askaris (Ukrainian volunteers) in Lager 3. The
undressed Jews from the transport came to the gas chambers in Lager 3.
Meanwhile, Fuchs and I ran the engine. Later on the motor was already started,
but at first not until people were already in the gas chamber as no Freiauspuff
(open exhaust) option was available. It always took two people to start the
engine; the battery was not sufficient by itself. Fuchs had built a special
device. There was an old magnet. One man turned the crank, starting the engine.
The flywheel had a sort of tire iron, which was used to start it, while another
person had to operate the magnetic ignition; that is why two men were required
to start the engine. (…) The gassing lasted about 20 to 30 minutes and I have
seen the bodies as they were brought out. They looked like normal bodies, many
came with some blood out their nose and mouth.[62]

As can be easily understood, figures regarding the amount of Jews put
into the three approximately 4 x 4 meter gas chambers vary among the witnesses.
Bauer estimated 50 to 60 people per chamber; Bolender estimated 40 to 50 people
per chamber; Karl Frenzel estimated the total capacity of the three chambers
between 150 and 250, thus around 50 to 80 people per chamber; Hubert Gomerski
also recalled the figure of 250.[63] These
estimates give an idea of the initial capacity for the three original Sobibor
gas chambers. Despite the constant attacks on such estimates by MGK, these are
very realistic for such a space.[64]
Fluctuations in figures were likely to depend upon the size of the arriving
transports, which would determine the density of Jews put inside the gas
chambers. A higher capacity was possible as the chambers could be “densely
packed” as Schlauch said of Belzec. Nazi documents regarding the gas vans
described the “normal capacity of the vans is nine to ten per square meter.”[65]

In Sobibór, Graf writes that a density of 9 persons per square
meter is “vaguely possible,” while in Treblinka he writes that 10 people
per square meter is the “highest density theoretically possible.”[66] Modern
mass transportation and crowd gatherings put the lie to Graf’s rejection:
during the Hajj, the Jamaraat Bridge has had measured crowd densities of 10
people per square meter[67], as has
also been observed at Wembley stadium[68]; buses
in China occasionally reach up 13 persons per square meter[69]; buses
in the Brazilian city São Paulo can carry twelve passengers per square meter[70]; trains
in Mumbai reach up to 14 to 16 standing passengers per square meter during peak
hours.[71] As
these examples occur largely amongst adults, likely to be males who are fully
clothed, even higher capacities would be possible at the gas chambers in the
Aktion Reinhard camps, where an over proportional number of women, children,
and elderly in the transports were stripped of their clothes, with the
deportees already suffering from dangerous malnourishment.

MGK also fail
to deal with the relationship between Fuchs and Bauer. In 1965, Fuchs faced
charges devoted to the installation and operation of the murder weapon. He is
the only defendant to have been charged in that manner. The charge is
summarized in JuNSV as:

Installing
and tuning of [an] engine, whose exhaust fumes were led into the gas chamber.
‘Trial gassing' of about 30 Jewish women as well as subsequent gassing of Jews
arriving in 3-4 transports. Instruction of camp supervisor (Lageraufseher) Bauer
- cf. Case Nr.212 - how to operate the engine.[72]

Fuchs’ admissions should
therefore be given high priority because they relate most directly to the
offence with which he was charged. He should also be given priority over Bauer
in any matters of dispute between them because he was instructing Bauer. MGK’s
methodology is therefore flawed because it fails to examine the relative
expertise of the witnesses and their access to information about the engine.

MGK claim that
Fuchs gave testimony in return for a light sentence.[73]
However, although Fuchs was released from the Belzec proceedings, he received
four years for Sobibor, which was commensurate with an accessory to murder
charge.

Following
discussions by euthanasia head SS-Oberführer Viktor Brack and Aktion Reinhard
chief Globocnik in Lublin, Wirth eventually returned to his post in Belzec
sometime in mid-May. As larger deportations to Belzec were extended into the
Krakow district at the beginning of June, Wirth decided that Belzec’s gas
chambers were in need of an overhaul. The camp was closed for a month, from
mid-June to mid-July 1942, in order to construct newer, larger, and more
effective gas chambers. It is also likely that the old wooden gas chambers had
been tarnished by the sweat, blood, urine, and excrement of the many thousands
of gas chamber victims.[74]

Following the
dismantling of the three old wooden gas chambers, a solid concrete or brick
building was constructed which housed six gas chambers.[75]
Estimates on the size of the new gas chambers vary but were likely in the
neighbourhood of 5 x 5 meters, an increase in gas chamber space by nearly half.
Rudolf Reder, who arrived in Belzec in mid-August 1942, described the new gas
chambers:

In the small yard you went up the steps to
the entrance door, above which there was a sign saying Bade und
Inhalationsraeume as well as a large flower basket, which made it look as
though it was really the entrance to a health spa. From the entrance a corridor,
which had three solid and tightly sealed single doors one either side, ran the
length of the building. These doors led into the windowless chambers, which at
the far end wall, adjoining the loading ramps I described earlier, had double
sliding doors. On the other side of the building, i.e. behind the wall at the
far end of the corridor, there was a small room where the engines were.[76]

Following the construction of new gas chambers at Belzec,
the camp was also famously visited by SS Officers Kurt Gerstein and Professor
Wilhelm Pfannenstiel. Gerstein described his inspection of the new gas chambers
prior to a gassing as follows:

After ascending a few small steps, we saw
three rooms to our left and right, which looked like garages; 4 by 5 meters,
1.90 meters high. At the back, indiscernible, wooden exits. On the roof a Star
of David made of copper. In front of the building a plaque with Hackenholt-Stiftung.
That is all I saw that particular afternoon.[77]

Pfannenstiel later
described the gassing on the next day:

Once the hair of the women had been shorn,
the whole transport was led into a building containing 6 chambers. As far as I
know, only 4 were needed that time. When the people had been locked into the
chambers, the exhaust gases of an engine were fed into these chambers. Gerstein
determined that it took 18 minutes for everything to become quiet in the
chambers. […] Once stillness reigned, the outer doors of the chambers were
opened and the corpses brought out, checked for gold teeth, and then piled up in
a pit. Again, this work was performed by Jews. No physician was present. I did
not notice anything unusual about the corpses. Some were bluish in the face.[78]

In Sobibor, for many of the same reasons as at Belzec,
new gas chambers were constructed during a period when swampy soil conditions
during the summer prevented widespread deportations to Sobibor. SS-Unterscharführer
Erwin Lambert took part in the construction work at Sobibor:

As I already mentioned earlier, I spent
between 14 days and three weeks at the Jewish extermination camp Sobibor. It
may have been in the autumn of 1942. I cannot remember the exact dates though.
Wirth had assigned me the task of enlarging the gas installations at Sobibor; I
was supposed to build them using the example of Treblinka. I traveled to Sobibor
with Lorenz Hackenholt. Hackenholt was at Treblinka at the time. We first
traveled to a sawmill near Warsaw. Hackenholt ordered a large quantity of wood
for the rebuilding works at Sobibor. Then we traveled on to Sobibor. We reported
to camp commandant Reichleitner, who gave us the appropriate instructions for
building the gas installation. The camp was already operational when we arrived
and already had a gas chamber as well. The rebuilding was probably necessary
because the old construction was either not big enough, or not solid enough.[79]

Franz Hödl also described
the new gas chambers at Sobibor:

There was a gas chamber with an attached
room for an engine. The exhaust gases were directed into the chambers to gas
the Jews. In the engine room there were two engines. There was a gasoline
engine, probably from a Russian tank, and a diesel engine. The latter was not
used. The gas chamber building contained 4 or 6 chambers on both sides of a
corridor, 3 on the left and 3 on the right (or 2 left and 2 right). The people
were forced into these rooms from the corridor. After the gassing the outside
doors could be opened and the bodies removed.[80]

In his work on Sobibor, Jules Schelvis compiles several
of Hödl’s testimonies from the 1960s into a single statement[81], which
MGK have criticized as “confusing,” not bothering with any further analysis.[82] In one
of these statements that Schelvis uses (above), Hödl states that there were
four or six gas chambers in the camp, while in a statement made three years
previously, Hödl states that there were six or eight chambers.[83] Both of
the statements mentioned six chambers, a number largely agreed upon by other
witnesses as well. Had the Revisionists gone to the original sources, a
necessary measure for their very limited and specific criticisms of witness
statements, they would have seen that Hödl’s statements are anything but
“confusing.” Finally, MGK have also ignored the rest of Hödl’s statement,
especially the admission that both a petrol and diesel engine were present at
the gas chamber, but that only the petrol motor was used for homicidal
gassings.[84]

In Sobibor, following the reopening
of nearby railways and the completion of the gas chambers, the camp resumed its
extermination activities in October 1942.[85]

[59] Sereny, Into that Darkness, pp.113-114. Stangl’s statement:
“When I got there, Wirth stood in front of the building wiping the sweat off
his cap and fuming. Michel told me later
that he’d suddenly appeared, looked around the gas chambers on which they were
still working and said, ‘Right, we’ll try it out right now with those
twenty-five work-Jews: get them up here.’ They marched our twenty-five Jews up
there and just pushed them in, and gassed them.
Michel said Wirth behaved like a lunatic, hit out at his own staff with
his whip to drive them on. And then he
was livid because the doors hadn’t worked properly.”

[64] Attacking witness estimates on the number of gassing victims in a
single chamber is a trademark of Holocaust “revisionists” in general, and is
usually one of the primary means of witness criticism employed. Witnesses are
known to have a poor ability to be exact on such quantifiable details,
especially as time progresses. In this case, even the higher victim estimates
by the perpetrators (80 victims inside a 16 sq m room = 5 victims per sq meter)
are easily achievable, especially with a substantial portion of children and
women among the gassing victims.

[65] Willy Just to Walter Rauff, 5.6.1942 BA R 58/871; cf. Kogon, Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, pp.333-337. This number is entirely realistic, as some
modern German train manufacturers specify the maximum standing capacity of
their passenger cars (obviously full bodied, fully clothed adults) at 8 persons
per square meter. See the advertising brochure from Tatra Trains, available at http://www.tatrawagen.de/werbeprospekt.pdf.